Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . George Weigel . January 10, 2003

Read more of Bob Abernethy's interview with George Weigel, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington:

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Q: What are the moral arguments for going to war against Iraq? You've written about the underlying responsibility of the government. What is that? What is the fundamental duty within which all this is discussed?
A: The "just war" tradition for 1,500 years has begun with the moral judgment that it is the responsibility of governments to protect the security of those for whom they have assumed responsibility. Just war tradition does not begin with some imagined presumption against violence. It begins with a positive statement. Now, there are many ways to [protect security], and the just war tradition helps us think about how the use of military force can contribute to fulfilling the moral obligation that governments assume.

Q: What are the major moral arguments for going to war against Iraq?
A: I think the moral argument begins with the question of order. The world needs a minimum of order for peace, justice, freedom, prosperity -- all the other goods of international public life -- to be pursued. The threat posed by terrorist networks and by rogue regimes with weapons of mass destruction is to that minimum of order necessary in world affairs so that all the other goods of international public life can be pursued. That's, I think, the fundamental question: Is the threat to order so grave here that it must be met by the use of military force?

Q: For many, many years, centuries, the idea was that nations had a right to respond to being attacked but did not have the right to attack first. Why is the U.S. now justified in going to war because of what somebody else might do, not what they've already done?
A: In the just war tradition, just cause for going to war has meant response to an aggression under way. The question is: How do you know when an aggression is under way? The character of these weapons do not allow for waiting to see what happens before something terrible happens, and the regimes which have demonstrated their utter contempt for the principles of international law, for the principles of moral order, cannot be assumed to be acting properly. When a demonstratedly aggressive regime acquires weapons of mass destruction -- not for purposes of deterrence but for purposes of attack -- it is legitimate to say, in moral terms, [that] this is an aggression under way to which there is a morally legitimate claim to response.

Q: How sure are we that Saddam Hussein has weapons that are a threat to us?
A: We certainly know that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction that are a threat to his neighbors, that are a threat to order in the Middle East, and that over time or through terrorist connections could be a threat to us. We know from 1991 that he was within perhaps six to nine months of acquiring a nuclear weapon or several nuclear weapons, and we have seen in the case of North Korea how if that is not prevented, we're suddenly in a much more difficult situation when the rogue regime has the nuclear weapons in place, not only in terms of what they can launch upon us through the use of ballistic missiles but [also] through the transfer of this nuclear material through terrorist organizations.

Q: What if the UN inspectors come back and say, "We can't find any evidence of nuclear weapons"?
A: I think it's very unlikely that they will come back and say, "We cannot find any evidence that this regime is seeking a nuclear capability." There may be some ambiguities in this, but the nuclear issue is not the only issue here. [There is] the chemical and biological issue, and particularly perhaps the latter. That, as we know, is a capability -- toxins, poisons of various sorts -- that is rather easily delivered, through terrorist networks in particular, and that has the capacity to do enormous damage in a highly developed society like our own.

Q: Well, why not deter attack? All these years, our policy has been to deter by threatening overwhelming use of force if another country does a certain thing. Why not do that with Iraq?
A: The case with Iraq turns on the nature of this regime. This is a man who has demonstrated that deterrence doesn't work with him. He has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He has used weapons of mass destruction in a war against Iran. He would undoubtedly have used weapons of mass destruction in the Gulf War had he had the opportunity to do so. All regimes are not equal in terms of moral analysis, and that has to inform the prudential judgment of statesmen. We're not dealing here with a Congress of Vienna, 19th-century, polite diplomacy environment. We're dealing with perhaps the most wicked political leader in the world today, and prudent statecraft, which is moral statecraft, cannot grant him the assumption of deterrability, if you will.

Q: And you are convinced that that threat is imminent?
A: I am convinced that it is real and present. I am convinced that it is a real and present danger. And I am further convinced, in terms of building a world of order, a world in which law and diplomacy are the normal means of resolving conflict, that removing this kind of threat from the international equation will build peace over the medium and long run.

Q: It's been pointed out by many people that the UN Charter and international law both rule out preemptive strike, and that's a very strong argument for many people, who say that we will abandon international law at our great peril and the world's.
A: I think that's a misreading of the charter, frankly. Both Article 2 and Article 51 of the UN Charter nail down in international law the right of self-defense. And if, as I said, you know that a certain kind of aggressive regime has a certain kind of capability, I think it's entirely plausible to make the argument, both legally and morally, that that is an aggression under way to which the response of proportional and discriminate force can be legitimate.

Q: If we claim the right to make a preemptive strike against another country, doesn't that give everybody else the license to do the same thing -- India, China, Pakistan?
A: It shouldn't.

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Gerge Weigel

Q: And isn't that an invitation to chaos?
A: No. It shouldn't do that. We're talking about a very specific circumstance here. And if the United States does take military action against Iraq, I believe it will do that with a sufficient degree of support from other nations, and perhaps from the UN itself, to make clear that this is not some kind of cowboy act of a state running around enforcing its own norms on the rest of the world. We should remember that the United States is doing this not for itself only. The United States is doing this, if it does it, for the sake of world order, for the sake of international law -- as the president said at West Point this past June -- for the sake of building a structure of international law that allows conflict to be resolved by means other than mass violence. We're not doing this for ourselves alone.

Q: Would it, however, open the door for the U.S. to do more of the same thing? If we attack Iraq preemptively because we perceive a threat there, would we be more inclined to do the same thing toward other countries?
A: I don't think so, because we have a situation in North Korea which looks on the surface to be similar, and yet on closer examination is quite different, and we're not proposing to do the same thing there at all. I mean, prudent statesmen can make discriminating judgments among these situations. I would also suggest that this entire debate would be well served by all of us avoiding terms like "preemption" and "preventive war." If there is an aggression under way, it's not a question of preemption. It's a question of response to an aggression that's already under way.

Q: Do we have the moral right to depose a leader of another country, perhaps kill him, just because we think he's a terrible man?
A: Not simply because he's a terrible man. There are a lot of terrible people running countries around the world today. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a terrible man, starving his people to death right now. Kim Jong Il in North Korea is a terrible man, doing terrible things and starving his people to death at the same time. There are different prudential judgments to be made in these different situations. In this particular case, this regime represents such a threat to the possibility of order in the region and the world, and this man is so crucial to the maintenance of that regime, that change in the regime seems to me to be the morally as well as politically necessary precondition to getting an Iraq that can really contribute to the building of order in the region, and that in fact could become a model democracy in the Arab world.

Q: Is creating a democracy something we have the will to see through? It's a difficult task in Iraq. And is it something that the Iraqi people are ready to create?
A: I think this administration has learned from the failures of the predecessor Bush administration in 1991 to see a war through to a successful political conclusion. And I think yes, the will is there, not simply to hit and run militarily, but to stay and try to facilitate the emergence of an Iraq that's good for the people of Iraq and that's good for the region. The Iraqi people are a highly educated population that, like the Palestinian people, have been saddled for more than 20 years with a corrupt and vicious political leadership. I think there is great capability there for self-governance, and with the proper help and assistance, I think they will rise to that challenge.

Q: One supposed goal of the U.S. is said to be to protect and secure the oil of Iraq. Is there a moral argument for doing that?
A: Well, insofar as oil is the crucial component these days of the world economic system, to have a vicious and aggressive dictator with a choke hold over a substantial part of that resource is not a good thing. My understanding is that the administration had made clear to the Iraqi opposition, to our allies, and to others that Iraq oil revenues after regime change will be used to rebuild Iraq, not to pay for the war, not for any purposes other than what they should have been used for the past 20 years, namely building that society.

Q: I want to move now to the consequences of an attack, whether it would do more good than harm. If Iraq mounts serious resistance to our attack, there could be heavy casualties, including, perhaps, many, many thousands of innocent civilians killed.
A: This is a serious moral question that any responsible government has to face when it's considering the use of military force. As a matter of fact, my own intuition is that this regime will crumble rather quickly because there is no upside for the Iraqi army -- even for [Saddam's] Republican Guards -- to resist what they know is the inevitable outcome of this action. So I don't think that's a possibility. I also think, however, that we are prepared to deal with, in a proportionate and discriminate way, the possibility that Saddam Hussein himself will use human shields, will use all sorts of other measures to try to maintain for some period of time his hold on power. But it does not seem to me likely that people who have been brutally oppressed for more than 20 years -- this is a country in which there is not a single family that has not been touched by the brutality of this regime -- are going to fight desperately to save a man they would like to have been rid of 12 years ago.

Q: But it's their country, and when one's country is invaded, most people fight.
A: These are people who have lived under perhaps the most repressive regime in the world for 20 years. The administration has made very clear that our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq, not with the country of Iraq; it's with this specific government and its policies, and I think that's understood there.

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Gerge Weigel

Q: It is also argued that an attack by us on Muslim Iraq would inflame opinion throughout the Muslim world, would perhaps provoke more terrorism and escalate violence, perhaps, between Israel and Palestine. It would certainly make the war on terrorism much more difficult, because we need the help of Muslim nations and governments. What do you make of all that?
A: These are serious questions of prudential judgment. It was also said in the fall of 1990 that if we took military action to expel Iraq from Kuwait, the "Muslim street," so-called, would rise up. None of that happened. I don't think it's likely to happen in this case. I think the danger in this case is of terrorist activity, particularly here in the United States, perhaps in Britain and elsewhere. But one has to have a certain measure of confidence that our government has thought that through in that dimension as well. And one also has to ask the question: What's the alternative? I mean, can we let ourselves be held hostage to these kinds of wicked forces on the chance that they may do something wicked? No. We prepared for that, as we are preparing for action in Iraq.

Q: You hear the extreme case argued that what we're looking at is the possibility of massive religious conflict between Christianity -- we are perceived as a Christian nation -- and Islam.
A: Saddam Hussein plays the Islam card and has done so for some time, but this man is in no sense a faithful Muslim, and I think most serious Muslims around the world understand that. The challenge to U.S. policy, the challenge to inter-religious dialogue in this circumstance, and indeed since 9/11, is to raise up and be in conversation with those elements of the Muslim world, a large number of people, who want a different future between Islam and the West. There is no doubt that there are elements of the Islamic world that hate the West and that see themselves in a war to the death against western society, western values, indeed, western religion. That's not the entire Islamic world. We need to find, lift up, and help bring to power those people in the Islamic world who want a different future.

This is very serious business. This is not a partisan question. This is not a sectarian question. I have high confidence that a United States government led, as I believe it is, by men and women of great moral earnestness, have taken very seriously the moral dimensions of this problem, the moral quandaries and possibilities of the use of force for the sake of peace and order in the world. And I think the American people can be confident that their leadership is approaching these problems with the kind of moral seriousness that they deserve.

Q: What would you say to Catholics in this country who read and hear what the pope has to say -- that attacking Iraq would not be in the just war tradition, that's it wrong. He opposes it.
A: Well, in fact, the pope has not said that. The pope has said that he hopes that every possible nonmilitary measure will be used. The U.S. bishops have said that they are not clear in their own minds that this would satisfy the conditions of the just war tradition. And to them I would say the catechism of the Catholic Church, in the section on the just war tradition, after listing the traditional criteria says quite explicitly the moral judgment on these matters is left to the prudence of statesmen. It's not the business of Church leaders to make the call. It's the business of Church leaders to clarify the principles, to teach the principles, to make sure that those principles are present in the public debate. But Catholic teaching says that this is a tradition for statesmen and they have to make the call, because they are the only ones with the full information necessary to make the call and they are the ones who have assumed the burden of moral choice here.

Q: What happens to all this calculus if the UN inspectors later this month come back and say, "We cannot prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction"?
A: I think it is inconceivable that the UN inspectors would conclude that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction and is not seeking the capability for further weapons of mass destruction. Now, there may be an argument about how far along certain paths, particularly to nuclear weapons, Iraq is, but we have known for a long time that this regime has these capabilities, particularly chemical and biological, and is actively seeking a nuclear capability. So it's inconceivable that they could come back and say, "This is snow white; they're clean as a whistle." That's an impossible conclusion to be drawn on the presently available evidence.

Q: Many people argue that deterrence against Iraq seems to have worked since 1991. We threaten them with terrible things if they use these weapons, so why not continue it?
A: Deterrence has worked at one level. There hasn't been another cross-border invasion by Iraq of anyone else. Deterrence has not worked in another respect. What revenues the regime is getting from what was supposed to be an oil-for-food, oil-for-medicine program have been massively deflected into ongoing weapons programs, particularly focused on weapons of mass destruction. So, one has to say, putting the nature of the regime together with the capabilities, they have maintained a very aggressive posture, even though this hasn't at the moment spilled over as it did into Kuwait in August of 1990.

Q: One of the concerns of a lot of people, particularly abroad, is that they're feeling that we are ignoring international institutions, traditions, treaties, that we are prepared to do something by ourselves when we should be insisting that it be done through international cooperation -- this idea that we are going it alone, unilaterally, troubles a lot of people.
A: I understand that it does. I would ask people to think about 1936 [and] another international institution, the League of Nations, incapable of enforcing the disarmament of the Rhineland. If Hitler had been responded to, even by one country -- even if the French alone had gone back into the Rhineland and said "No, you are in violation of your treaty obligations, get out of here, get those troops out of here" -- the historians tell us that the Hitler regime might have crumbled at that point, sparing us the Second World War, the Holocaust, and so on. There are moments in history when great powers have great obligations that only they can meet. In fact, if military action takes place in Iraq, the United States will not be going it alone. There will be allies. But no one should doubt that America bears a special burden of responsibility for creating the minimum conditions of world order in the world as it is today.

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